


Steady On

by GoodMorningMoon



Category: Murdoch Mysteries
Genre: Angst, Caretaking, Drugs, Episode Related, Gen, Gunshot Wounds, Historical, Hurt/Comfort, Injury, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, POV Alternating, Period-Typical Homophobia, Surgery, Whump
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-09
Updated: 2020-01-09
Packaged: 2021-02-27 03:48:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,344
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22180543
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GoodMorningMoon/pseuds/GoodMorningMoon
Summary: After the ambush at the church, only a select few know George Crabtree is still alive. Cross-posted to ff.net.
Relationships: George Crabtree & Llewellyn Watts
Comments: 6
Kudos: 49





	Steady On

**Author's Note:**

> By request from themurdochmemesteries and spatcult on Tumblr (although bits of it were rattling about in my head for a while). Written after 13x06 ("The Philately Fatality") so we know what Watts has been struggling with. 
> 
> As always, thanks to Maureen Jennings and Shaftesbury for creating such a wonderful sandbox to play in.

George was floating. He was disconnected from his body somehow, suspended in space, rising through layers of clouds. He thought he smelled the ghost of something sickly sweet. Where was he? At the moment, he hardly cared. Wherever he was, was… nice.

He was pleasantly warm. A noise buzzed in his ears, and he felt the room spin slowly around him. He thought he heard a voice, but its words were indistinct. No, make that _two_ voices, one high and one low. Nothing they said was the least bit intelligible. He became intensely aware of some sort of pressure on the side of his chest. Did it hurt? No, not exactly… but he could not name the sensation. It was not a familiar one. He felt rather than saw it bloom into a golden halo.

Something cool and damp moved across his face. It felt heavenly. He was suffused with feelings of love, and happiness, and peace. He found himself wishing he could stay here indefinitely—wherever _here_ was…

* * *

Miss James dropped the bloodied bullet into a basin, and waited a moment while Detective Watts held the small white mask over Constable Crabtree's nose and mouth again. She sank the tip of the forceps back into the wound on Crabtree's chest. It was still bleeding, and she thought she might have to tie off a blood vessel to make it stop. She dug about a bit—thankfully, after the second dose of ether, he did not resist—and found the shredded vein. She clamped it off.

A few loops of suture and two knots later, she hoped she was finished. The forceps joined the bullet in the basin, and she picked up a piece of gauze and pressed it against the wound until she could be completely sure she had stanched the flow.

She was reeling. _This was not how tonight was supposed to go, at all._

Rebecca had been working in the silent morgue, poring over a post mortem report one last time before she went home for the night, when a loud pounding at the back door startled her half to death. She slid the huge wooden door open to reveal the sight that would haunt her for days every time she closed her eyes: a panicked Detective Watts, begging for help, standing over a bloody, glassy-eyed Crabtree on the ground gasping for breath.

The rush of adrenaline that had gotten her through the surgery was starting to recede, and she was trying her very best not to shake. She still had to clean the wound, and dress it, and ensure that the constable was in no further danger. And why was he _here_ , and not the hospital?

Finally she withdrew the gauze. For a brief moment, she let herself slump against the counter. The bleeding had stopped. She took a deep breath as she retrieved a bottle of tincture of iodine, and a phial of heroin. _What else? What else?_ she racked her brain. _Disinfectant, painkiller… syringes. One with a needle, one without. Saline. More gauze. Bandages. Adhesive tape. Right._ She collected the lot, and carried them to the cart next to the morgue table. She had never before seen a living form upon the table, and she found the sight most unsettling.

Rebecca was grateful she had listened carefully to Doctor Ogden's musings on stitching up various members of the Constabulary over the years. She recalled the teachings of her mentor as well as what she had been learning in medical school about wound care as she studied the bullet hole in Crabtree's chest. She decided that before she irrigated the wound, she would medicate him: he had been writhing in agony when Detective Watts had brought him in, and the ether that Watts had twice administered would wear off very soon. There was no reason for him to feel any pain right now. She drew 5mg of heroin up into one syringe, and tapped her patient's arm to find a vein.

A small smile twitched at the corner of Crabtree's mouth as the drug took effect. Rebecca watched, and relaxed a little. She recalled the words of one of her instructors at the medical college for women: _Always speak to the patient as if he were awake_. "There, George. May I call you George? I suppose I shall, just for now. Now George, I'm going to clean out your wound," she told him softly as she cut more of the bloodied union suit away from his injured side.

She filled the other syringe with the saline and irrigated the hole, then used a clean, damp towel to wipe the worst of the blood off his chest and side. Next she pulled the cork out of the top of the bottle of iodine, and saturated a piece of gauze. "I'll disinfect it now. This may sting a bit," she told him before wiping the dark orange gauze against his broken skin.

He barely flinched. _He must be very comfortable indeed._ She swabbed at the wound some more, then dropped the soiled gauze into the basin next to the forceps. "I'm putting the bandage on now, George," she said as she applied a fresh dressing and secured it with the tape.

"You're not going to sew it up?" 

Rebecca looked up, startled. She had all but forgotten that Watts was still there, still wringing water out of a cloth in the basin and mopping at the constable's slackened, sweaty face.

"It's too small a wound to suture. Barring infection, it should heal nicely as long as he keeps it covered." She ran a hand through her patient's damp hair, and spoke to him gently once again. "You're going to be all right, George."

"He… he has… there's more blood. On his neck. Left side. I don't know if it's from another wound." The nervous energy that had been crackling off the detective had evaporated completely, and he sagged against the table that held his friend.

"So I see, thank you." She picked up another piece of gauze and moistened it with more saline, then wiped the blood off George's neck and ear to get a better look. "Yes, it is another wound. Not serious. Just a graze. Half an inch to the left, and things would have been much worse." She opened the iodine again, and swabbed some on with fresh gauze. A tiny whimper escaped the man on the table.

"He'll recover, then?" Watts ventured.

"Yes. Again, barring infection, he should recover well indeed. He's a very lucky man. The damage could have been much worse. The bullet struck a rib. It nicked a blood vessel, hence the danger—but I was able to repair the damage, or at least make the body route around it."

Watts cleared his throat.

"May I praise you on some… excellent work, Miss James."

"Thank you, Detective." _Doctor Ogden will be so proud,_ she thought happily, and then sobered. _Should we see one another again._

There was a silence as they both looked at the constable's still form. Rebecca finally spoke.

"Detective?"

"Yes, Miss James."

"I have questions."

"I don't doubt you do, Miss James. You… want to know why I brought him _here_ , to you."

"Well, yes. I confess I am curious." She laughed uneasily.

"Miss James, I will preface my explanation with another request." Rebecca thought he looked uncharacteristically anxious.

"And what would that be?"

"I need you to produce a death certificate for him."

"I beg your pardon!" she retorted, incensed. "I can do no such thing, given that he is not dead! Doctor Ogden has entrusted me with…"

"I'm afraid you must," interrupted Watts as he rubbed his forehead. "Doctor Ogden is missing, likely at the hands of the same men who tried to kill the… constable and two of his colleagues. I've no doubt that were she here, she would sign such a certificate herself, with alacrity."

"Two of his… what? Who? What exactly happened to leave him in such a condition in the first place?"

"Well he was _shot_ , Miss James."

Rebecca nearly exploded. "I know _that,_ Detective Watts, but _why?_ And by _whom?_ "

Watts cringed. "I wish I knew for sure. He, Constable Higgins, and Constable Jackson were at the church at Yonge and Heath to meet with Detective Murdoch when they were ambushed by a number of men with guns."

Rebecca was stunned. She knew things in the station house were bad since Detective Murdoch had gone missing, but she had never imagined anything like _this._ "Well did you _see_ them? Can you identify them? They must be caught! They can't get away with this!" Her eyes grew even wider. "Could they… could they be the same people who took Doctor Ogden?"

"Even if they are not, they were almost certainly directed by those who are." He put the cloth in the basin and stared at a point behind her. "Miss James. I believe Detective Murdoch has uncovered some sort of corruption at the heart of this city, and is in… mmmortal danger as a result. As are his associates. Inspector Brackenreid has been sacked, and, well, you see what's happened to Crabtree."

"What about Higgins and Jackson?" Rebecca was becoming more and more alarmed as Watts' implications sank in.

"I… I'm afraid I don't know. Last I saw, they were on the way to the hospital. I brought George here so that no one will be looking for him. He's safe only if they don't know he's alive."

Rebecca sank back against the counter as she grappled with what Watts was saying. Every option she could think of was dreadful. Refuse to sign the death certificate, and once again risk the life of the man she had just saved. Sign it, and risk her own career (and perhaps even her own freedom or her very mortal existence, given the terrifying vindictiveness already displayed by those who had seized control of Station House Four). She wished fervently that Doctor Ogden were present to guide her.

An idea occurred as Watts looked at her expectantly and scratched his chin: maybe falsifying a death certificate was a way to protect her absent mentor. Constable Crabtree was a highly skilled investigator, and there was so much in desperate need of investigation...

 _If anyone can figure it all out and put everything back to rights, Constable Crabtree and Detective Watts can. But surely they cannot do so in plain sight._ She took a deep breath, and came to a decision.

"All right, Detective, let me get the form. And then we need to decide where the constable can recover. Clearly he can't stay here."

Watts closed his eyes in silent thanks. "I'll take him home with me. We will need to move quickly. If Higgins or Jackson didn't survive, they'll likely arrive here soon."

* * *

"George."

He thought he heard someone calling him.

"George." The voice came again, and he felt a hand on his… what was that, his shoulder? He supposed it was his shoulder. The sensation radiated outward in a shimmering glow.

"Mmm," he finally replied. Everything was wonderful.

"George, we have to go. I'm going to take you to my room. It's not safe for you here."

"Mmm," he said again. He felt someone lifting his head, and swinging his feet to the floor.

"Can you stand?"

 _Stand._ What did that mean? Something to do with feet. He had feet! And a head. He thought it ached, but he wasn't sure. Everything pulsed gently with a soft light, and finally he recognised who was speaking to him.

"Hello, Watts," he declared cheerfully, and giggled. "Why are we in the morgue? Did I die?"

"On paper, yes. We have to get you out of here now, though."

George giggled again. Watts was funny. And was that Miss James staring at him? She was funny too.

He felt a tug, and found himself taking a lurching step forward, then another, and another. He was so sleepy. Was this sleepwalking?

"Watts. Where are we going? I'm tired. I want to sleep."

"I know, George. It's not safe here. I'm going to take you somewhere safe."

He burst out laughing. "Watts!"

"Yes, George. It's all right. Steady on." Another step.

"Watts!"

"Yes, George?"

"I'm going to be sick!" he announced brightly, and then he was.

* * *

"Just go," Miss James told Watts as she mopped the vomit off his boots.

Watts regarded her with scepticism. "Are you sure? What if he's sick again?"

"He likely will be. It's very common after ether, and heroin as well. Just try to make sure he's pointing away from you. The nausea should subside in a few hours."

" _Hours_?" Watts was horrified. "That's not helpful, Miss James!"

"Well, I'm sorry, but there's not much else I can do in a morgue! This isn't a place to take care of the living!"

"I… suppose not." Watts grimaced, and weighed the alternatives. He could shepherd a wounded, drug-addled, retching man to his own home, or he could… condemn him to death. The choice was clear, albeit repugnant. Watts could hardly bear the smell of vomitus at the best of times, and right now he could barely resist the urge to retch himself.

"He'll need different clothes," he suddenly mused aloud. "A nauseated, bloodied police constable will attract attention."

"I dare say. How did you get him here, anyway?"

Watts shifted uncomfortably. "Let's just say I had some help."

The young woman's eyebrows rose. "Pardon?"

Watts pressed his lips into a line and shook his head. The driver of the ramshackle wagon rattling by at just the right time had clearly been on an errand of which the Constabulary would not have approved, and Watts had bought the man's assistance with a promise of silence. "Perhaps I could retrieve something for him from the station house's locker room."

"There's no time for that," Miss James replied. "But I believe there are some overalls and a jacket in the janitor's closet."

"Right, then," Watts said decisively, "we'll get the jacket on him now and he'll have the overalls for later." He turned to the man dozing on the table. "George! With me."

* * *

Five minutes later, Watts and George Crabtree were on their way. Miss James had provided them with an oilcloth sack in case George was sick again—after tonight's events, they certainly weren't going to leave obvious tracks—and phials of laudanum for when the heroin wore off. She hoped he wouldn't need it, but chest wounds could be quite painful, especially when there was trauma to a bone.

She wished them Godspeed and slid the heavy door closed. _Please, God, no more guests tonight._ She scrubbed the last of George's blood off the table and the floor, and then sat down to affirm in writing that the man she had just saved and sent on his way was lying deceased in a drawer. A few hours ago, the idea that she would ever falsify official records would have seemed absolutely absurd, but now, she could hardly do it quickly enough. _Anything for Doctor Ogden._

* * *

The sight of a man helping a clearly intoxicated fellow through the back alleys of Ward Two was a most unremarkable one—there was drunken singing and carousing outside Watts' small window nearly every night of the week. He had taken a basement room near Station House Four when he had started as a detective there, and so, mercifully, he and George did not have far to go.

Even so, the journey that usually took a matter of minutes lasted over an hour. Watts lost count of how many times they stopped so George could heave into the sack and then wait to catch his breath. At first he was still stumbling and cheerful from the narcotic, but as they trekked, the drowsiness took over, and he leaned more and more heavily on Watts as they made their way through the poorly lit alleyways. By the time they arrived on Clara Street, he was nearly dead weight, and Watts was grateful that his abode was down some stairs, not up them.

He unlocked the door. "Just a few more steps, George, and then you can lie down again." His hand on the doorknob, Watts gave a squeamish glance toward the oilcloth sack and shuddered as he contemplated what to do with it. "Are you… are you quite through being sick?" he asked the breathless man. "Don't speak, just nod or shake your head," he said as quietly as he could. The very last thing he wanted was the stench of vomit in his room. (The second last was Mrs. Moore knowing he had brought in an unauthorised guest—she would demand extra rent for the night, and while he wouldn't mind paying it, no one could know George was there.)

George swayed unsteadily against Watts for a moment, and finally nodded. A plaintive grunt escaped him.

Very well, then. He would tie the sack closed and deal with it in the morning.

Watts laid a finger on George's lips, and opened the door to guide him inside. They were greeted by near pitch blackness, with only a sliver of illumination from the streetlight piercing the high, shallow window to land on the bed.

The light shone on a stack of clean and neatly folded socks and undergarments, left there by his landlady. _Damn._ He would have to clear those off to make a place for George, and he would also have to come up with a reason why Mrs. Moore could not enter his room at all for the next few days. Perhaps he could say he was ill, and did not wish her to become so as well.

He shuffled George toward the settee, and when he found it by running into it, he gingerly sat George down. George immediately tipped over towards the arm, and Watts caught him before he rolled onto the floor. "Stay there, George."

He felt around on the table next to the settee for the oil lamp and a match. He brought the lamp into the ray of light from the window and lit it, then replaced it on the table and waited a moment for his eyes to adjust. He turned down the bed, and returned to retrieve a slumbering George.

"George! Wake up!"

The constable responded with a loud snore.

 _Rats_ , thought Watts, and bent down to relieve George of his boots. How was he going to get him to the bed? Not wishing to aggravate his wound, he was chary of lifting the man from under the arms. He had seen enough blood for one night. "George!" he hissed again, and shook his good shoulder.

George awoke with a start, and a cough, and then a stifled yelp. " _Ow!_ "

Watts shushed him again. "Sorry. Come to the bed." He heard his own words, and a thought he found most shameful rose unbidden. _Not now, Llewellyn. Not ever._ He reddened. He was glad the light was dim.

"Throat… hurts," George rasped. "Chest… too." His right hand made its way protectively to the wound, and the left gripped Watts' sleeve.

"The heroin is most likely wearing off, and the ether was… hard on your throat." Watts wrinkled his nose at the memory of the smell. "Miss James spoke of this. She sent laudanum." He dug through the scraps in his pockets to find the bundle of phials into which she had measured individual doses, and put it on the small table next to the bed to unwrap it.

He sat George up, and opened one of the tiny bottles. He crouched in front of the grimacing, half-conscious man. "George. Drink this." He held it to his mouth. George winced as it went down—the added cinnamon could do only so much to mask the liquid's bitterness. Watts put the bottle down and poured a glass of water from the jug on the table.

"It'll work soon. Here. Drink this water and let's get you in the bed." _And only you. Not me._ Untoward thoughts were trying to intrude, as they so often did when he was tipsy or tired, and he pushed them down with as much force as he could muster.

The next few minutes were a challenge for them both. George wanted out of his jacket and the bloodied shirt and union suit, and getting the union suit off meant removing the vomit-stained trousers as well. Watts abruptly realised this meant that not only would there be a Crabtree in his bed, but an _unclothed_ one. His heart nearly stopped.

 _Hellfire,_ he thought as a wave of panic washed over him. George was working his right arm out of the shirt sleeve, and crying out softly with every movement. Watts turned away as he tried to collect himself. "Right," he muttered anxiously. "Get you a nightshirt. Cold in here. Basement." He practically leapt to the dresser and yanked the drawer open more violently than he'd intended, managing to stop it only a fraction of an inch before it clattered to the floor. He grabbed the nightshirt he had just put away, and, heart pounding in his ears, turned back toward George.

The constable was entirely oblivious to the beads of sweat forming on Watts' brow. He himself was staring hard at a point on the floor, his teeth gritted as he struggled his way out of the shirt and began working at the buttons on the tattered, bloodstained long johns. Without looking up, he panted, "Watts. A little assistance, please?"

 _Unto the breach, I suppose,_ Watts thought, and swallowed hard before steeling himself to help his friend disrobe.

Watts made sure the nightshirt went on over George's head and his bandaged chest almost the second the union suit reached his waist. He helped George work his arms into his sleeves, then stood him up and let the nightshirt fall to its full length before he reached under it to grasp the top of George's trousers and tug them downward. He could not risk exposing the man's groin even for a second, for he could not trust himself with the sight. He held the trousers taut, not letting his hands graze George's legs as the staccato rhythm in his own chest hammered on.

The nightshirt on and the long johns off, Watts helped George onto the bed. He laid him on his right side, cradling his head as he lowered it to the pillow. _Keep the wound above the heart,_ Miss James had told him. He pulled the quilt up over him, and listened as George's breathing began to ease.

Watts released a breath himself. He had managed to behave entirely honourably toward an undressed George, despite the nagging thoughts he so desperately wished would leave him be. His heart finally began to slow. An impulse led him to pat George awkwardly on his good shoulder, and then he sank onto the settee to untie his own boots. "Laudanum starting to work?"

"Mm-hmm," George agreed pleasantly.

"Good. You are in need of rest."

"Mm-hmm."

There was a silence. Watts pulled off one boot, and then the other. A voice came from the bed. "Thank you, Watts. You're a good chap."

Watts flushed slightly and said nothing as he blew out the lamp. He reclined on the small couch as he so often did at night, with a good book—many were the mornings he had awakened there. But tonight, he knew no sleep would come.

* * *

George awoke slowly, confused and sore. His throat was scratchy, and the left side of his chest throbbed with pain. Where was he?

Moving hurt, so he tried to remain still as he took in his surroundings. He was in a bed, lying on his side, in what looked to be someone's dimly lit and sparsely decorated room. There was a worn blue settee nearby with a blanket crumpled on it, and a desk and chair, both piled high with books and papers. A table with an oil lamp and a water jug. A high, grubby window filtering in a modicum of sunlight. No photographs, or mementos, or any indications other than the books and blanket that someone actually lived here.

 _Basement_ , he recalled. _Someone said "basement."_ But who?

Disjointed fragments of memory started to come back. He recalled flashes of the ceiling of the morgue. Blazing hot pain in his chest. Giddiness. Watts, looking terrified. Had he ever seen Watts look like that before?

A wide-eyed Miss James, standing over him wielding some sort of surgical tool. He couldn't remember its name. _Was she holding a bullet? Who was shot? Was someone shot?_

_Oh, God._

It all flooded back at once. Higgins and Jackson, waiting with him for Detective Murdoch at the church. The realisation, coming only with the bursts of gunfire, that they had walked into an ambush. A thud to his chest so hard it knocked him to the floor, and then searing, aching pain. Detective Murdoch's anguished cries for help. Watts' gentle hands holding him down at the church, then lifting him up onto the table at the morgue. _What had happened in between?_

Why was he not at the hospital? Where was Detective Murdoch? Higgins? Jackson? Were they even still alive?

_Holy heart of Mary. Oh, God, oh God oh God oh God._

He could hardly fathom how terrible everything was. The inspector sacked, the detective accused of murder, Doctor Ogden missing…

_This must be a nightmare. This can't be real._

He screwed his eyes shut. Robert Graham's face sneered at him. _All you have to do is look away._

He opened his eyes and shook his head to try to clear it. He was still in the little room.

 _Shit_ , he thought bitterly, and rolled onto his back. _Bad move._ The bed spun, and he heard himself whimper.

A hushed voice. "Shh, George. You're safe. It's all right."

Watts. This was Watts' room.

Both men knew things were not all right. Nothing was right at all.


End file.
